


lingering

by nutellamuffin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftercare, Body Dysmorphia, First War with Voldemort, Full Moon, Hurt/Comfort, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Self-Hatred, Self-Indulgent, Sirius Black is a Good Boyfriend, i kind of just go on and on sorry, it kind of switches pov based on paragraph, like it’s almost both their povs at the same time?, normally i do remus’ pov but i wanted to look into sirius’ head too, so sorry if that’s confusing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28447263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutellamuffin/pseuds/nutellamuffin
Summary: august, 1980. remus broke a nail and somehow that hurts more than anything else.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	lingering

**Author's Note:**

> it’s the full moon tonight and i got sad so have this

remus notices he broke a nail, and somehow, even though it’s the most mundane thing in the world, he feels like he’s lost his last sense of control over his own body. (perhaps the fact that he turns into something so unbearably unhuman every month is why he keeps his nails trimmed and cared for, because clean, cut nails are something _human_ and _familiar_ and he broke one. he feels less and less human by the day, by the month, by every broken nail and scar and cut and scrape and bruise, and something in the back of his mind tells him it doesn’t matter because he never was.)

none of this seems to bother sirius- _this,_ of course, being remus’ nail, that certainly doesn’t require any tears to be shed over but he can feel his eyes pricking. no, it doesn’t, because sirius is currently massaging salves into remus’ heel, and remus wants to sag into the mattress, so he does.

he’s saying something about how _it’s definitely going to bruise_ , or maybe he’s talking about remus’ ankle, but he doesn’t care too much anyway since his entire body feels like one big bruise. remus sighs, blowing a few curls out of his eyes, and when they flop back exactly where they were before, he still doesn’t move to fix it.

sirius does. sirius has let go of remus’ foot and sometime in between remus closing his eyes and opening them again, he’s moved to kneel on the floor right beside the bed. he brushes remus’ hair out of his eyes, and said eyes are looking back at him with some kind of distinct sadness; the kind that’s hollow, the kind that’s gold-flecked and runs deep and is so becoming of remus that it makes sirius’ heart tighten in his chest.

his skin is cold under his hand, almost icy as sirius lets it move down to cup his cheek; even though the air sticks to his skin in damp, late summer air, climbing underneath his t-shirt and in between his joints.

“i know what you’re going to say.”

even though sirius had been talking a mere few minutes earlier, it feels like that’s the first thing he’s said in hours. (he always likes to talk after they shift back, when he’s wrapping remus in a flannel on the forest floor and ignoring the way the wet leaves stick to his wrists and his forehead and his shoulder blades. remus hasn’t figured out if it’s because he hasn’t really spoken all night long or if he knows remus won’t speak back.) and yet, he sits, and he stays, and he says _i know what you’re going to say_ , even though what he really knows is that remus won’t say anything at all.

“and hey, i wouldn’t have studied my ass off to essentially become an illegal service dog if i didn’t care about you, now would i?” sirius grins somehow, but remus’ throat is raw and he notices now more than ever that his hip bones stick out oddly and he wants to hide. he pulls the blanket tighter around him. sirius’ grin fades, and he feels guilty for that, too.

remus wants to say he’s sorry but his voice has been lodged in his throat for hours now and it shows no sign of returning. he shuts his eyes tight and turns away from sirius, pulling the blanket up to his ears- as much as it makes his bones ache to do so- and he doesn’t realize the tears have started to fall until he turns to press his face into the pillow, and it’s wet. he takes a shuddering breath in and his chest feels hollow from where his skin is pulled tight against his ribs, and he wants to claw it all away until it’s gone and nothing hurts anymore. _next moon. maybe next moon._

and remus knows he’s staring, he can feel his grey eyes boring into his back, he can anticipate the shift of his weight and the question that he asks himself in the heavy silence. if he should stay and shove aside remus’ attempt to get sirius to leave him alone, crawl into bed with him because he knows what he really wants; or if he should take the first warning and go sleep on the couch until remus feels like letting him in again.

remus curses his voice as it stays exactly where it is, in between his worn vocal chords.

sirius chooses the first option. remus feels something break inside that’s not entirely physical, pulls sirius into his blanket cocoon, and tells his mind in its state of half delirium that he’s never going to let him go again. he can’t tell if sirius is telling himself the same thing, or if somehow he’s trying to convey it to remus, as he loops his arms around his waist.

some nights, nights like this, remus could scream. some nights he wanted to shove sirius out of bed, and some nights he wanted to kick his own self out; and some nights he wished for them to be something beyond this world, so that he may lie and listen to sirius’ heartbeat for eons, without the thought of whether he’d eaten or drank in the past twelve hours looming over his head.

(that’s sirius’ favourite question, and that’s the answer remus always has on the tip of his tongue; poised and waiting, like a dart. he’s not hungry, he’s never been hungry except for one night a month, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be hungry again.)

there’s metal at the back of his throat, and there’s kisses being planted on his hairline, and they don’t go together.

“tomorrow, we’ll go down to that pharmacy on the corner of the intersection. pick you up some of those muggle painkillers, the ones for headaches and the like.” sirius says _we_ like remus belongs and even though he knows he won’t be moving for at least two days, he doesn’t find any want to correct him if he could. “won’t help completely, but it’ll fix up what the balms didn’t.”

and he’s perfect, he’s so, so perfect and somehow _remus_ is the one being embraced by him in the dark. somehow this mangled mess of elbows and scars and dark circles is what got sirius’ attention, somehow the fact that he spends one night a month as an animal and roaming the woods near their apartment building with a monster doesn’t deter him; somehow, above all else, sirius picks _remus_ , and remus has abandoned the search of a reason why many years ago.

now, instead, he just basks, in the warmth of sirius’ body around his own and the lingering scent of his worn off cologne, and he stays. sirius’ shirt is damp, and the joints in remus’ fingers ache from how they’re curled into the fabric, and yet sirius makes no comment about neither the tears nor the clinging.

he’s talking again, about something like twigs or leaves or maybe that thorned thing he had to pry out of remus’ hair earlier, but it’s all fuzzy. everything is blurring at the edges, and it can’t be remus’ vision, because his eyes are closed. it can’t be sirius, either, because sirius is perfect and wonderful and warm and sirius is saying something, saying something _now_ and persistent and he’s saying **_remus._ **

remus doesn’t want to answer. he wants to cry some more, possibly, and he wants to sleep, but he doesn’t want to answer because he has nothing to say. the hand on his cheek thumbing the tears away tells him that sirius knows this, and it clicks that maybe he wasn’t just talking for a conversation.

 _i love you,_ he’s saying, _you’re perfect,_ he’s saying, and only one of those things remus will accept, but he says nothing because if he does, it’s admitting that he doesn’t deserve sirius. and he can’t have sirius leave. he can’t. the hollow thing in his chest grows at that, just a bit, clawing at his insides. _he can’t have sirius leave._

beside him, sirius says that he’s proud of him. remus blinks and he can’t tell if what’s obscuring his vision is the darkness or the tears. he doesn’t know how to feel when the first thing his voice lends to him is the strength to say _don’t leave,_ and sirius makes some kind of a pained face and pulls remus closer against his chest.

“i won’t.”

“promise. promise me.”

“i promise.”

remus’ voice catches in his throat again, except for an entirely different reason. he can see sirius’ silhouette now, he can make his grey eyes out in the dark, and when sirius tilts his head down, remus wastes no time in drawing their foreheads together. he’s holding his face in his hands as if when he lets go, sirius will disappear.

“promise me again.”

“i promise. i’m not going anywhere.” perhaps it’s the fact that there wasn’t a hint of hesitation in his voice, or how his arms tightened around remus’ waist when he says it, or the way he adds _there’s nowhere else i want to be_ in a quiet voice; it makes remus take a shaky inhale and let go of sirius, in favour of hiding in his chest again, where it’s warm and safe and more of a home than his own skin.

sirius says _i love you_ into remus’ hair and remus whispers it back so quietly that it’s almost lost to the deafening silence, but somehow it was never lost in the first place.


End file.
